Chapter XV.
They in me breathed a voice
Divine; that I might know, with listening ears,
Things past and future; and enjoined me praise
The race of blessed ones, that live for aye.HESIOD.
PHILOTHEA to PHILÆMON, greeting:
The body of Anaxagoras has gone to the Place of Sleep. If it were not so, his hand would have written in reply to thy kind epistle. I was with him when he died, but knew not the hour he departed, for he sunk to rest like an infant.
We lived in peaceful poverty in Ionia; sometimes straitened for the means whereby this poor existence is preserved, but ever cheerful in spirit.
I drank daily from the ivory cup thou didst leave for me, with thy farewell to Athens; and the last lines traced by my grandfather's hand still remain on the tablet thou didst give him. They are preserved for thee, to be sent in to Persia, if thou dost not return to Greece, as I hope thou wilt.
I am now the wife of Paralus; and Pericles has brought us into the neighbourhood of Olympia, seeking medical aid for my husband, not yet recovered from the effects of the plague. Pure and blameless, Paralus has ever been—with a mind richly endowed by the gods; and all this thou well knowest. Yet he is as one that dies while he lives; though not altogether as one unbeloved by divine beings. Wonderful are the accounts he brings of that far-off world, where his spirit wanders. Sometimes I listen with fear, till all philosophy seems dim, and I shrink from the mystery of our being. When they do not disturb him with earthly medicines, he is quiet and happy. Waking, he speaks of things clothed in heavenly splendour; and in his sleep, he smiles like a child whose dreams are pleasant. I think this blessing comes from the Divine, by reason of the innocence of his life.
We abide at the house of Proclus, a kind, truth-telling man, whose wife, Melissa, is at once diligent and quiet—a rare combination of goodly virtues. These worthy people have been guardians of Eudora, since the death of Phidias; and with much affection, they speak of her gentleness, patience, and modest retirement. Melissa told me Aspasia had urgently invited her to Athens, but she refused, without even asking the advice of her guardian. Thou knowest her great gifts would have been worshipped by the Athenians, and that Eudora herself could not be ignorant of this.
Sometimes a stream is polluted in the fountain, and its waters are tainted through all its wanderings; and sometimes the traveller throws into a pure rivulet some unclean thing, which floats awhile, and is then rejected from its bosom. Eudora is the pure rivulet. A foreign stain floated on the surface, but never mingled with its waters.
Phidias wished her to marry his nephew; and Pandænus would fain have persuaded her to consent; but they forebore to urge it, when they saw it gave her pain. She is deeply thankful to her benefactor for allowing her a degree of freedom so seldom granted to Grecian maidens.